Further to my article on the stunningly fraudulent Carolyn Guertin, some readers have suggested that the “radical cyber-feminist” is merely an anomaly, albeit a vivid one, and not a reflection on her corner of academia. I’ve subsequently argued that one has to ask how Guertin’s “work” survived evaluation and peer review, and how she has come to find an audience “at conferences and events across Europe.” The fact that Guertin has been employed, and is still employed, by otherwise reputable institutions suggests a systemic dysfunction. Indeed, I’d suggest that Guertin is merely a symptom of a much broader malaise – one that has rendered large areas of academic study irretrievably tendentious and intellectually worthless.

Evidence to support this view can be found via Durham in Wonderland, where the estimable KC Johnson casts a gimlet eye over Duke University’s history department and its postmodern leanings. One faculty member, Professor Pete Sigal, will soon be shaping young minds with courses on colonial Latin American history and a seminar titled Sexual History around the Globe. A synopsis of the seminar asks, somewhat breathlessly:

“What does it mean to sexualize history? How does the historical narrative change as we use sexuality as our reading practice? What happens to the sign of history when confronted with the sign of sexuality? …When we read a military history, we will ask not just about sexuality as a topic within the military (Did soldiers have sex with other soldiers? Did soldiers impregnate prostitutes?), but also about sexuality as a reading process. What happens when we centre our entire analysis of the military by sexualizing the bodies of the soldiers?” 

Heavens. Somebody hand that man a towel.

Professor Sigal is, clearly, eager to “confront” students with the question: “What happens when we focus a feminist and queer analysis on history?” To resolve this burning issue, Johnson turns to Sigal’s previous scholarship, most notably his book, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire. The “historical” themes explored by Sigal include The Phallus Without a Body and Transsexuality and the Floating Phallus.

Further to Manish Vij’s claims that Apu is a “crude racist stereotype” and that Hank Azaria is actually a “brown man”, today the Guardian’s very own PC bigot Joseph Harker berates those who dared to disagree.

Readers may remember Mr Harker for his willingness to redefine words to suit his arguments, his repeated assertion that “all white people are racist,” and his belief that, “as a black man… I cannot be racist… because in the global order I do not belong to the dominant group.” (Some of the more discerning Guardian readers have wondered how this remarkable claim might address the realities of “dominant power” in, say, Zimbabwe, or overtly racist assaults committed by people with dark skin.)   

Today, Mr Harker would have us believe that Manish Vij “put across some cogent arguments” – sadly, none of which are specified – and that the disagreement of many readers was in fact an example of the “now wearisome onslaught faced by any ethnic minority writer flagging up the issue of racism”: 

“Overwhelmingly negative, it seems that nearly every commenter either didn’t understand his argument, or didn’t want to. Each (rare) comment expressing empathy with the writer was immediately drowned out by a welter of antis.”

Harker doesn’t appear to entertain the – perhaps more obvious – possibility that readers did understand Vij’s arguments and simply found them wanting or absurd – for instance, the bizarre confusion regarding Mr Azaria’s pigmentation. Instead, Harker blames his non-compliant readers and insinuates some nefarious racial prejudice:

“Now, the Guardian is part of the British national press, which has traditionally been produced by and for white people (though things are slowly beginning to change). But this paper is at least supposed to be at the liberal end of the spectrum, so one would have thought there’d be a few progressive types out there prepared to come forward. But where are you? Have you all been frightened off by the bullies, the boors and the bigots?”   

Naturally, Harker pre-emptively defines “progressives” as those who agree with Manish Vij, and by extension with himself. One therefore wonders whether those who have the temerity to disagree with Mr Harker, even on matters of fact and logic, will in turn be dismissed as cowards, boors and bigots.

Righteously, he continues:

“Some time ago I wrote saying that all white people are racist. I didn’t mean in-your-face, BNP-style racism, but the subtle, unthinking, subliminal kind. Now I think I was being too kind… If we want to have a sensible discussion about race, or racism, is it possible on a general-access website such as this? Or do we need to find a new corner of cyberspace, and boldly go where no stupid white man has gone before?”

It is, I fear, significant that Harker’s solution to encountering unexpected disagreement is to yearn for a different venue and a more sympathetic audience, rather than to present a more convincing argument.

Click to, um, enlarge. More. Have at it, burly chaps! (H/T, The Thin Man.)

Further to this post and recent comments on the word “bourgeois”, this might be of interest. Norm has posted an itemised piece by Democratiya editor, Alan Johnson, called Why I Am Not a Marxist. It’s quite good on the fundamental unrealism of Marxist theory, its quasi-religious dynamics, and the evils inherent to its practical application. Here’s a very small taste:

“Fifth, the extraordinary romantic hostility to ‘bourgeois’ society that Marxism projects. Hatred of ‘bourgeois’ rights, ‘bourgeois’ democracy, ‘bourgeois’ morality, ‘bourgeois’ art, the ‘bourgeois’ family (and on and on), has fuelled hatred toward decent if prosaic societies and institutions and indulgence or worse toward appalling societies and institutions. And all in the name and the spirit of being ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-bourgeois’…

This animus against things ‘bourgeois’ I have come to despise. It is reckless about the defence of democratic society, insensible to how truly miserable the actually existing alternatives to ‘bourgeois’ society have been, and quick to morph into support for any thug who happens to be shooting at anything identified as ‘bourgeois’. This animus is the common sense of much of the intellectual class in the West where it is called ‘critical theory’. Inchoate negativism toward anything ‘bourgeois’ has morphed into support for anything that is ‘transgressive’. We are all Hezbollah now.”

It’s worth reading in full. Related, Fabian on bourgeois-on-bourgeois hatred.

Update: Chris Dillow points out Marx was wrong and unoriginal.

Thanks to Franklin at Artblog, I rediscovered Frank Miller’s NPR piece on patriotism and real-life supervillainy. Given some of Miller’s previous work, it’s an interesting development. Here’s an extract: 

“To me, [the flag] stood for unthinking patriotism. It meant about as much to me as that insipid peace sign that was everywhere I looked: just another symbol of a generation’s sentimentality, of its narcissistic worship of its own past glories. Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbours were ruthlessly incinerated… Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys; imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbours. In my city. In my country…

For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years. Patriotism, I now believe, isn’t some sentimental, old conceit. It’s self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation’s survival. Ben Franklin said it: If we don’t all hang together, we all hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and family, and you count on them to watch your own back.”

More here.

The creator of Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns has described his next book, Holy Terror, Batman! as “a piece of propaganda” and “a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we’re up against.”